Studije kulture i antropologija: sudar titana ili narcizam malih razlika?
Cultural Studies and Anthropology: Clash of the Titans or Narcissism of Small Diff erences?

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the relationship between social (or cultural) anthropology and cultural studies. During the crisis of representation in the 1980s, anthropology rediscussed its own theoretical positions becoming aware of its political and epistemological positions which pushed the discipline towards the growing trends in cultural studies. Th is opened up anthropology to various theoretical paradigms that did not originate in the anthropology itself (such as theory of deconstruction, various theories of agency and so on), while at the same time, anthropology still got tied to ethnography as it is core methodological principle. In the meantime, cultural studies lost the political edge they had at a time when it seemed that “cultural studies will be the death of anthropology” facing the crisis of critique, and it seems that it is time for cultural studies to take a look at anthropology. Th at does not mean that “anthropology will be the death of cultural studies”, but rather that cultural studies can meet anthropology through the dialogue with current anthropological paradigms that seem rather distant from the current trends in cultural studies. Primarily, I believe that so-called ontological turn in anthropology deals with radical cultural alterity and calls for the rethinking of current epistemological and political positions in social sciences. Regardless of the position one takes for/against those theoretical developments, the dialogue between these two disciplines should open up space for a new critical rethinking of the contemporary world.

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